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If his skill set had matched his passion for the game, Jeff* would have played soccer through college and maybe beyond. His talent only carried him through high school, though, so when Jeff got to college, he suddenly found himself on the outside of the soccer pitch looking in, but with lots of energy that needed to be expelled.
“That’s why I started running,” Jeff notes. “I played some club soccer as a freshman in college and that was fun, but I’d get home at the end of the day and still have all this energy left that I felt I had to get rid of. So, I started running. After a while, I started running just to see how far I could go.”
Jeff soon found himself running mile after mile. Along the way, he developed a passion for running that exceeded his passion for soccer. His passion was so great that after graduating from college he went back to school to earn a master’s degree in exercise science, in part because he wanted to learn how to efficiently run longer distances.
“I used that information to coach myself,” Jeff confirms. “Then I got into running marathons. For five or six years, that’s all I did was marathons. I eventually got my time down to 2 hours, 38 minutes, which for me was pretty good because I’m not genetically blessed. But I was willing to push the boundaries of my performance.”
A couple of years ago, Jeff was forced to push the boundaries of his pain tolerance. He considered himself fortunate that, strangely, the pain kicked in only after he’d completed a run. But knowing that pain was waiting for him at the finish line toyed with his psyche, which adversely affected his performance.
“The pain was in the Achilles tendon in my left foot,” says Jeff, 47. “I put up with it for about a year, and then it seemed the faster I ran, the more it hurt afterward. I eventually had it checked out and was told it was Achilles tendonitis. But nothing the physical therapists were doing for it was helping. In fact, the pain was only getting worse.”
With the pain affecting his training, Jeff visited a foot surgeon who told him he was suffering from Haglund’s deformity, a condition in which a bony bump forms on top of the back of the heel bone. In Jeff’s case, the bump was aggravating his Achilles tendon, so in May 2021, he underwent surgery to have the bump removed.
But the surgery didn’t alleviate Jeff’s discomfort. After taking off nearly six months from his running routine to recover, Jeff was still limping from pain in his left heel.
“I said to myself, Good gosh, what do I do now because I’ve had surgery? There’s no next level after that,” he remembers. “Then I noticed this place called QC Kinetix in Fort Myers. I’m very open to new techniques, to new ways of doing things, so I went in and visited with them. After that, I decided to give them a try.”
State-of-the-Art Treatment
A local practice with a national reputation, QC Kinetix offers concierge-level, drug-free, nonsurgical pain management and state-of-the-art regenerative medicine treatments for soft tissue pain, joint pain and musculoskeletal conditions.
As an alternative to medications and surgeries, QC Kinetix treatments trigger the body’s ability to repair itself from the inside out using each patient’s healing properties, which are found in the blood.
That blood is gathered from the patient during a typical blood draw, then placed in a centrifuge, where the healing properties are separated and extracted. The healing properties are then injected into the patient’s damaged tissue or joint.
The injected substance sparks a tissue regeneration that allows the body to rebuild itself over a few weeks or months.
“Regenerative medicine is a great alternative for many people who thought surgery was their only option,” says Tanvir Dara, MD, medical director of QC Kinetix Gulf Coast, which has locations in Fort Myers and Naples.
Dr. Dara is a strong believer in regenerative medicine and the positive impact it can have, which is why he chose to become associated with QC Kinetix. His goal is to serve a new group of patients and provide an alternative and less-invasive treatment.
“I am board-certified in both emergency medicine and internal medicine, and I know that people who go to an orthopedic surgeon for pain are commonly told they may need surgery,” Dr. Dara explains.
“And I understand that there is a time and place for surgery. But in many cases, there is an alternative, and that’s why I became involved with QC Kinetix.
“I want to offer people an alternative to surgery, pain medications and steroids for their joint pain. That is exactly what QC Kinetix and its regenerative medicine treatments do.”
-Dr. Dara
Though it is on the leading-edge of medical science, regenerative medicine is not a new concept. Its most basic principles have been practiced for years. At QC Kinetix, the process has been updated to make it as effective as possible.
For example, QC Kinetix uses state-of-the-art equipment that allows for the retrieval of the most useful healing factors from blood. It can also obtain healing factors from young blood cells with extensive self-renewal properties.
QC Kinetix works with patients across multiple visits, providing drug-free injections that are customized for each case. Symptom improvement is then monitored for several months while patients experience no downtime.
Most patients complete their treatments within six months and go on to live pain-free lives.
“Another feature that sets QC Kinetix apart is that we do all of this in-house,” Dr. Dara points out. “Your blood, your tissue never leave our office. And we do all this work while you’re there, in our office. When we’re done, you simply go about your normal activities.”
Custom Care
Regenerative medicine can be used to treat arthritis, muscle tears or tendon tears almost anywhere in the body, including the knees and shoulders, ankles and wrists, hips, low back, and neck. As Jeff soon learned, it can also be used to treat heels.
“We base each treatment on the patient’s condition,” says Dr. Dara. “In Jeff’s case, our goal was to decrease the inflammation in the area where he had the surgery, prevent the development of scar tissue and get him moving pain-free again. It was largely a soft-tissue treatment.”
At QC Kinetix, that treatment typically requires a series of injections of the healing properties extracted from the blood. Jeff received his first injection in March 2021. In April 2022, Jeff ran the Boston Marathon, finishing in 3 hours, 1 minute, 29 seconds.
Though 17 minutes off the winning pace for his 45-49 age group, Jeff was 20 minutes ahead of the time needed to qualify for the 2023 Boston Marathon, so he considered it a victory. He has been in training for this year’s marathon and running other races largely because of the regenerative injections.
“The pain in my heel is gone, and the limp is gone,” Jeff elaborates. “I’m dealing with some other foot issues that are unrelated, but as for the problem that slowed me down and took me out for a while, that’s all gone, so I’m doing very well. I really could not be happier with the result of the QC Kinetix injections.
“And I really can’t say enough good things about the people there. They’re all over-the-top nice and extremely informative and helpful. I’m really glad I looked into what QC Kinetix has to offer because it worked really well for me. I would gladly recommend QC Kinetix to anyone because what they did for me was great.”
* Patient’s name changed at his request.
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